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Friday, August 23, 2013

As The Steam / GOG Turns #8: Somewhat of a Slow Week

Welcome back to As The Steam/GOG Turns, the continuing story of two competing digital distribution services that compete for everyone's attention.

This week, I want to talk a lot more about games, game releases and such. There is really like no overlap between Steam and GOG this week, so let's get on with the show!

First I want to discuss something cool that GOG did this week before I get into releases.

Steam Greenlight has been... shall I say... controversial within the indie games community, where both fans and developers have absolutely no love lost for the Steam Greenlight service. So, GOG takes a look at this and starts singing "Anything you can do, I can do better" (from the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun) and they revealed GOG.com/indie for any and all indie developers to submit their work and (hopefully) get onto GOG. But they are being remarkably upfront about their criteria for submission so maybe it'll work better than Greenlight, who knows.

Now I want to discuss the releases for GOG:

First up this week is Shadowgrounds Survivor, a top-down shooter game. I love these kinds of games, especially if they're not "bullet hell" type shooters so I will definitely consider giving this one a go. Next is Hammerwatch which is a retro style hack-&-slash game. That looks interesting, so I might give that a go at some point, probably when it is on sale for less than $7-$8. And finally on the GOG releases this week: Thunderscape, a 1990s dungeon crawler game. $6 isn't too bad for a game of its vintage so if you like dungeon crawlers I say get it.

And finally this week here are the Steam releases of note:

First up is The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and this one's getting universally trashed. And why wouldn't it? It is $50, and it's yet another attempt for the people who own XCOM to try and shove a strategy game series into an FPS game. This game seemed interesting to me so I might get it at some future point when it goes on a serious 75% off sale and play through it.

Next is a game that went through the arduous Steam Greenlight process mentioned above and is now available for realsies: Divekick, which is a 2-button fighting game created by Adam Heart, aka keits from Shoryuken.com, and Iron Galaxy Studios, known for its ports of various fighting games like 3rd Strike that've come out as of recently.

Next is a game that, if you've already prepurchased it, or you paid $30+ during Lab Zero's IndieGoGo campaign, you already own but the rest of you can now pick up the full retail copy of Skullgirls and give it a play. Go on, you know you want to.

Finally, we have a couple of prepurchases on Steam: Game Dev Tycoon, the game infamous for basically releasing its own pirated version of the game and then having you lose the game because too many people are pirating your games (which was a brilliant stroke BTW), the Angry Video Game Nerd game, and Might & Magic X: Legacy. Have fun, you guys!

So, that does it for this week. And until next time, the Steam/GOG conflict ever turns...